I’ve always been fascinated by thunderstorms. Can someone explain why we see lightning before we hear thunder, and what exactly causes both of these phenomena?
In: Physics
the eli5 answer is that because of physics sometimes during storms clouds get electrically charged one way or the other. things don’t like to be electrically charged and so when they get too far from neutral they’ll release (or discharge) that electricity. that’s lightning, sometimes it’s to other clouds if for instance one has a strong negative charge and one has a strong positive charge but if it can’t discharge to another cloud it’ll discharge to the ground to go neutral, that’s when lightning strikes the ground (and actually it doesn’t just go one way, it forms a loop)
so that’s the lightning. now one of the things about lightning is it’s VERY hot. in fact because it’s so hot it makes the air it go through expand a lot. when it’s done the air now has a big gap in it from when all of the super hot air expanded and so new air rushes in to fill that gap. that process creates the very loud bang sound that we know as thunder
now the reason you see the lightning before you hear the thunder is actually really simple. light travels at 186282 miles per SECOND. sound travels at 767 miles per HOUR. so for every 5 miles you are away from the lightning strike there will be a second of time gap because the sound needs to catch up to the light. you can’t see it in the US but if you ever see a plane go faster than 800 miles per hour it’s really weird because you’ll see the plane fly overhead completely silently and then just a little bit later you’ll hear a crack and a loud roaring sound and actually feel a breeze from the plane going by and that’s because it’s going faster than the sound it makes (which is bonkersville)
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